WPI grad is working the crowd to fund startup

Sunday

Dec 16, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Aaron Nicodemus ON BUSINESS

A graduate from Worcester Polytechnic Institute is attempting to launch a company that would manufacture plastic straws, stirrers and drinking cups made out of a material that would turn red if someone slipped a date-rape drug in your drink.

Michael T. Abramson, a 2005 electrical and engineering graduate and intellectual property attorney at the Boston firm of Holland & Knight, is trying to build prototypes for a company called DrinkSavvy. Although buoyed by a $12,500 Kalenian Award from WPI, Mr. Abramson needs about $50,000 to begin manufacturing a prototype of his invention.

Last week, Mr. Abramson’s idea got a lot of attention, with mentions in The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, WHDH Channel 7 and other places. (The first mention of the product, that I know of, was in Bonnie Russell’s College Town column in the Oct. 28 edition of the Telegram & Gazette).

Beyond the story of making a product that can detect whether someone has slipped a colorless, odorless date-rape drug like GHB, Ketamine or Rohypnol into your drink, what is interesting to me is the way Mr. Abramson is raising funds.

It’s called crowdsourcing, and it is a path that some inventors and entrepreneurs have used successfully to bypass the whole venture capital process and, hopefully, all of the strings that come with accepting money from a VC firm.

With crowdsourcing, an entrepreneur asks regular people to send any amount of money to fund an idea, startup or studio album. Kickstarter is an established crowdsourcing website used by musicians and other artists to fund their endeavors. The idea is that if you help fund the album, you are paying for the music before it is actually recorded. More money invested usually garners swag such as autographs, drinks and dinner with the performer, and the like.

Mr. Abramson is using the website Indiegogo.com, which is geared more toward entrepreneurs seeking to get their product into production.

On the site, Mr. Abramson uses a video and a long advertising pitch to convince investors into giving him as little as a dollar, and as much as $5,000, for his venture.

For a dollar, you get to be called “awesome,” kept up to date on all things DrinkSavvy, as well as being “memorialized” on the company’s website. For $5, you are five times as awesome.

For $10 or $15, you can get 100 DrinkSavvy drinking straws or 50 drinking cups. For $25, you can get two packs of DrinkSavvy straws or cups. (They will retail for $20 each! Get them before they exist!)

For $50, you get the two packages of DrinkSavvy products, plus a DrinkSavvy logo sticker with the words “I helped make this possible.”

For $75, you get the two packages, plus an invitation to the DrinkSavvy launch party in Boston and a phone call from the founder. (I tried all week to get Mr. Abramson to call me back for this column. Maybe I should have pledged $75. But I don’t know what I would do with all those DrinkSavvy straws).

For $100, DrinkSavvy will give your business a shout-out on its Facebook and Twitter pages. This seems worth a lot less than $100 to me, but perhaps you get that plus all the other stuff. It’s not made clear.

For $150, you get the packages, the launch party invitation, the call from the founder, plus the founder will come and pitch his products to the college or university of your choice.

For $500, you get all that other stuff plus you get to be listed as a personal sponsor on the company’s website.

For $1,000, you get all that other stuff plus you are listed as a corporate sponsor on the company’s website.

And finally, for $5,000, you get all that other stuff, plus the founder will come and give you an exclusive in-person pitch of the product.

Think this doesn’t work?

You’re wrong. The website says 86 people have pledged $1; 207 have pledged $5; 200 have pledged $10; 207 have pledged $15; 193 have pledged $25; 39 have pledged $50; 22 have pledged $75; nine have pledged $100; 10 have pledged $150; four have pledged $500; and one has pledged $1,000. No one has pledged $5,000 yet.

So far, Mr. Abramson has raised about $27,470 this way, according to Indiegogo.com, and is on his way to raising the $50,000 he needs to build prototypes. The fundraising deadline, according to the website, is Dec. 29.

The website predicts that DrinkSavvy straws and cups might be ready in a year. Until then, watch your drink.